Menard To Fly Hourly Workers To North Dakota

(above) Hardware store manager Larry Boutiltier has had a hard time finding employees in North Dakota

From: Associated Press

Home improvement retailer Menard Inc. says it will hire workers from its home base in Wisconsin and fly them to North Dakota to staff a store in Minot, which is near the state’s booming oil patch and because so many people had previously left the state.

The company said in a statement that it plans to hire 50 workers in Eau Claire, Wis., where it has its headquarters, and fly them weekly to Minot, which is also in the middle of an unprecedented building boom as it recovers from record flooding last year.

Menard, which has more than 200 stores in the Upper Midwest, said this would be the first time it has ferried in workers by airplane, but it believes jetting in employees for weeklong stints and housing them in hotels “is going to be a permanent solution for as far as we can see.”

“We were able to stay staffed with the oil boom, and then the flood happened,” Graef said. “Now, we’re trying to get ahead of both of those.”

Finding workers to keep up has been tough, he said.

“Everybody has a ‘now-hiring’ sign in their window,” Graef said.

Businesses struggle to attract workers throughout North Dakota, which has some 22,000 more jobs than takers and the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, at 2.4 percent, Job Service North Dakota data show. The unemployment rate in Minot is 2.3.